1,572 research outputs found

    Vitiligo at Injection Site of PEG-IFN-α 2a in Two Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C: Case Report and Literature Review

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    A 72-year-old female and a 57-year-old male with chronic hepatitis C were treated with a combination therapy of pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN)-α 2a (180 μg s.c. once a week) and ribavirin (1,000 mg orally daily). This resulted in the destruction of melanocytes at the injection site in both patients. In the male patient, the depigmentation progressed to the surrounding skin area. The dermatologist concurred with vitiligo as the diagnosis in both patients. Injection and surrounding site vitiligo associated with PEG-IFN-α 2b treatment for hepatitis C was noticed in previous case studies. For the first time, the case reports below highlight the same immunological adverse event secondary to PEG IFN-α 2a/ribavirin combination therapy and explain, in part, the complex interaction between host immune response and viral genotype. In addition, we systematically review drug-induced vitiligo and autoimmune diseases associated with the depigmentation disorder

    Quick Test for Quality Deterioration in Processed Foods

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    A quick test for quality deterioration of milk powder, refined oil and atta, based on the indicator test solution was studied. The indicator test solution comprising NaOH and bromotIlytnol blue indicator remains stable for 6 mont1ls itl glass bottles. Depending on the acidity of the Sample, the colour changed from blue to light blue to green to yellow. The concentration of the indicator test solution is optimised for each product, viz., 4 ml for milk powder and refined oil and 2 ml for atta, to which 1 ml aqueous sample or oil is added which gives the colour change. The appearance of green colour is considered tIle cutoff point for inferior quality alld is based on the limits specified by the Bureau of Indian Standards for these products. The test has proved its efficacy in quality checking during storage of milk powder and deep fat frying of products in refined oils

    A Lightweight and Efficient Scheme for e-Health Care System using Blockchain Technology

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    We are witnessed to the huge amount of health care information is processed via Internet and uploaded to the servers. Hence, the network content suffers from various challenges in handling this wide range of information such as privacy-preservation, message requests, and sharing of information with the entities. Protection of health care information with less communication overhead and avoid signaling congestion among entities is the biggest concern. We suggest a simple and effective blockchain-based system for ehealth care in order to address these problems. We attempt to show the collective trust between receiver/ users and key generation center (KGC). Due to the characteristics such as tamper-resistant of transactions and responsiveness, the blockchain technology maintains the data access policy and privacy of each receiver/ users. In addition, we provide the public transactions apparently with the help of miners. Also, the performance analysis shows that the protocol is free from all the security attacks and avoid the signaling congestion with less overhead

    Land-site suitability evaluation for tea, cardamom and rubber using Geo-spatial technology in Wayanad district, Kerala

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    Kerala is one of the important states contributing to the production of plantation crops and spices in the country. Soil and Land evaluation in various land utilization types has been carried out to assess the land suitability for tea, cardamom and rubber in Wayanad district of Kerala. Different soil physico-chemical parameters like, pH, electrical conductivity, organic carbon and physical attributes database of soil mapping units developed in inventorying of soil resources at 1:50K scale using LISS-III satellite data on soil series and its association used to evaluate soil site suitability for tea, cardamom and rubber. The results indicated that for tea around 55.79% area is suitable for cultivation of which 14.62 %, 25.51 % and 15.66 % found highly suitable (S1), moderately suitable (S2) and marginally suitable (S3), respectively. About 26.92 % and 12.10 % found moderately suitable (S2) and marginally suitable (S3) for cardamom and about 32.48 % area marginally suitable (S3) for rubber. The area unsuitable for cultivation (N) of tea, cardamom and rubber were found to be 11.69 %, 28.46 % and 34.99 %, respectively, due to constraints like relief, topography, soil physico-chemical attributes such as base saturation, pH and soil moisture regime etc. The study proposed an integrated methodology for mapping and assessing suitability of land using remote sensing and GIS techniques

    Land-site suitability evaluation for tea, cardamom and rubber using Geo-spatial technology in Wayanad district, Kerala

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    Kerala is one of the important states contributing to the production of plantation crops and spices in the country. Soil and Land evaluation in various land utilization types has been carried out to assess the land suitability for tea, cardamom and rubber in Wayanad district of Kerala. Different soil physico-chemical parameters like, pH, electrical conductivity, organic carbon and physical attributes database of soil mapping units developed in inventorying of soil resources at 1:50K scale using LISS-III satellite data on soil series and its association used to evaluate soil site suitability for tea, cardamom and rubber. The results indicated that for tea around 55.79% area is suitable for cultivation of which 14.62 %, 25.51 % and 15.66 % found highly suitable (S1), moderately suitable (S2) and marginally suitable (S3), respectively. About 26.92 % and 12.10 % found moderately suitable (S2) and marginally suitable (S3) for cardamom and about 32.48 % area marginally suitable (S3) for rubber. The area unsuitable for cultivation (N) of tea, cardamom and rubber were found to be 11.69 %, 28.46 % and 34.99 %, respectively, due to constraints like relief, topography, soil physico-chemical attributes such as base saturation, pH and soil moisture regime etc. The study proposed an integrated methodology for mapping and assessing suitability of land using remote sensing and GIS techniques

    New Approximability Results for the Robust k-Median Problem

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    We consider a robust variant of the classical kk-median problem, introduced by Anthony et al. \cite{AnthonyGGN10}. In the \emph{Robust kk-Median problem}, we are given an nn-vertex metric space (V,d)(V,d) and mm client sets {SiV}i=1m\set{S_i \subseteq V}_{i=1}^m. The objective is to open a set FVF \subseteq V of kk facilities such that the worst case connection cost over all client sets is minimized; in other words, minimize maxivSid(F,v)\max_{i} \sum_{v \in S_i} d(F,v). Anthony et al.\ showed an O(logm)O(\log m) approximation algorithm for any metric and APX-hardness even in the case of uniform metric. In this paper, we show that their algorithm is nearly tight by providing Ω(logm/loglogm)\Omega(\log m/ \log \log m) approximation hardness, unless NPδ>0DTIME(2nδ){\sf NP} \subseteq \bigcap_{\delta >0} {\sf DTIME}(2^{n^{\delta}}). This hardness result holds even for uniform and line metrics. To our knowledge, this is one of the rare cases in which a problem on a line metric is hard to approximate to within logarithmic factor. We complement the hardness result by an experimental evaluation of different heuristics that shows that very simple heuristics achieve good approximations for realistic classes of instances.Comment: 19 page

    Greedy Selfish Network Creation

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    We introduce and analyze greedy equilibria (GE) for the well-known model of selfish network creation by Fabrikant et al.[PODC'03]. GE are interesting for two reasons: (1) they model outcomes found by agents which prefer smooth adaptations over radical strategy-changes, (2) GE are outcomes found by agents which do not have enough computational resources to play optimally. In the model of Fabrikant et al. agents correspond to Internet Service Providers which buy network links to improve their quality of network usage. It is known that computing a best response in this model is NP-hard. Hence, poly-time agents are likely not to play optimally. But how good are networks created by such agents? We answer this question for very simple agents. Quite surprisingly, naive greedy play suffices to create remarkably stable networks. Specifically, we show that in the SUM version, where agents attempt to minimize their average distance to all other agents, GE capture Nash equilibria (NE) on trees and that any GE is in 3-approximate NE on general networks. For the latter we also provide a lower bound of 3/2 on the approximation ratio. For the MAX version, where agents attempt to minimize their maximum distance, we show that any GE-star is in 2-approximate NE and any GE-tree having larger diameter is in 6/5-approximate NE. Both bounds are tight. We contrast these positive results by providing a linear lower bound on the approximation ratio for the MAX version on general networks in GE. This result implies a locality gap of Ω(n)\Omega(n) for the metric min-max facility location problem, where n is the number of clients.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures. An extended abstract of this work was accepted at WINE'1

    Groundwater Geochemistry of Neyveli Lignite Mine-Industrial Complex, Tamil Nadu, India and Its Suitability for Irrigation

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    This study was undertaken to assess the quality of groundwater for irrigation and level of trace metal concentration in the surface and groundwater bodies from Neyveli lignite mine-industrial complex which is located in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu, India. The hydrogeology of the Neyveli groundwater basin is extremely complex, consisting of a series of productive, confined aquifers below the lignite seam in both Mine I and II areas, while a semi-confined aquifer lies above the seam and occurs only in the Mine II area. The suitability of groundwater quality for agricultural purposes in and around Neyveli lignite mine-industrial complex was assessed by measuring physicochemical parameters, including major cation and anion compositions, pH, total dissolved solids, electrical conductivity, and trace metals. The results of the chemical analysis of the groundwater showed that concentrations of ions vary widely and the most prevalent water type is mixed CaNaHCO3, followed by other water types: mixed CaMgCl types and NaCl which is in relation with their interactions with the geological formations of the basin, dissolution of feldspars and chloride and bicarbonate minerals, and anthropogenic activities. The most dominant class is C1-S1, C2-S1 (85% PRM and 74% POM) in the study area, indicating that sodicity is very low and salinity is medium, and that these waters are suitable for irrigation in almost all soils.Based on sodium absorption ratio the groundwater of the study area is suitable for all types of crops and soil except for those crops sensitive to Na and based RSC values of the groundwater, considered safe. Based on the parameters such as TDS, EC, SO4, Cl and Wilcox diagram about 99% of samples are suitable for irrigation. The average concentration of trace metals (Fe, Mn, Cr, Zn, Pb, and Cu) in groundwater samples fall within the permissible limit, with the exception of Ni which is recorded higher than the permissible limit which may retard growth and metabolic activities while the groundwater used for irrigation

    Capacitated Center Problems with Two-Sided Bounds and Outliers

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    In recent years, the capacitated center problems have attracted a lot of research interest. Given a set of vertices VV, we want to find a subset of vertices SS, called centers, such that the maximum cluster radius is minimized. Moreover, each center in SS should satisfy some capacity constraint, which could be an upper or lower bound on the number of vertices it can serve. Capacitated kk-center problems with one-sided bounds (upper or lower) have been well studied in previous work, and a constant factor approximation was obtained. We are the first to study the capacitated center problem with both capacity lower and upper bounds (with or without outliers). We assume each vertex has a uniform lower bound and a non-uniform upper bound. For the case of opening exactly kk centers, we note that a generalization of a recent LP approach can achieve constant factor approximation algorithms for our problems. Our main contribution is a simple combinatorial algorithm for the case where there is no cardinality constraint on the number of open centers. Our combinatorial algorithm is simpler and achieves better constant approximation factor compared to the LP approach
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